Green energy adoption and its determinants: A bibliometric analysis

Green energy has received extensive attention worldwide for its outstanding contributions to fighting environmental damage. However, in recent years, there have been indications that the outlook for social acceptance of green energy adoption (GEA) is not optimistic, and potential difficulties and challenges from various aspects are possible in the future. To this end, a growing body of literature explores the determinants of GEA that will push towards greater social acceptance. Taking into account the current lack of an accessible holistic overview of the knowledge structure of GEA research and its determinants, high-level insights urgently needs to be provided. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to conduct a comprehensible bibliometric review of GEA research and the determinants of GEA. First, with the help of different bibliometric analyses, an in-depth view of GEA publications, looking at active authors, highly productive countries/regions, the most relevant journals, citation structures, and GEA's thematic evolution, is visually presented. Second, further supported by a content analysis, this work sorts out and identifies the key determinants of GEA in terms of technical matters, adopter levels, corporate promotions, and environmental challenges. Finally, the existing knowledge gaps, as well as possible future research directions, are summarized based on the above findings. The work presented in this paper will help scholars to obtain systematic knowledge and a structured understanding of GEA research and its determinants.